The 2017 season begins…

The 2017 season starts this Thursday, so theres a few notes about changes for the upcoming season:

Divisional Format

There are 13 teams entering the league and not just the 12 that we had anticipated. This means that our original plan of 3 x divisions of 4 has had to be revised. After a lot of discussion between the committee members we decided that the best decision was to put 5 teams in Div 2 and 4 each in divisions 1 & 3.

Re-registering on the BSF Website

Please can all team captains ensure they have re-registered their team on the BSF website, which all teams need to do before we can publish the fixtures on there, as it won’t let us do it even if only 1 team is outstanding.

Opening Day Game – Thu 6 April

This was originally planned as a big opening day game between the winners of the two divisions last season (Pyros & Tigers) but unfortunately this just couldn’t happen with the way the fixtures worked out, due to some teams’ more limited availabilities.

However, the opening day game this Thursday (6 April) should still be a good one with the Redbacks taking on the Tigers at Chilwell.

We’d really like to make this opening season game a complete league affair, and get as many people down to the ground from other teams as is possible, which is why I’ve only scheduled one game on this day.

As such the league are also still looking into ways to give something back to those who do attend on the night to support (if we can), but I can’t give you any precise details of what that will be at this moment, but grab some beers (assuming you’re not driving of course) and head on down this Thursday to watch the action!

The game is due to start at 6pm or as close as is possible, given the difficulties in getting to the ground for people coming straight from work.

Fixtures 

We’re pleased to welcome the Pulse into the league following their successful debut in the latter half of last year as the Misfits development team, and a lot of credit goes to those in the club for getting an influx of new players in the off-season, but of course primarily to Nigel & Kat, who have helped to grow the number of teams in the league again.

We also welcome back the University teams of Nottingham & Loughborough after their summer (& winter!) break.

The format of the fixtures as I’ve presented them is a little different to previous years, but hopefully there should be no issues understanding it. It’s also colour coded by day of play to highlight when teams are playing at weekends etc.

We will do an update with a page per team showing all of your fixtures and umpiring responsibilities separately, in the same format as Charlie has sent out in the past. This will only be when I get a chance to do it I’m afraid but hopefully that will be in the next week to 10 days.

Umpiring

We have assigned umpiring duties by team as fairly as possible given the huge number of restrictions in place.

The maximum number of umpiring slots per team is 6 and as per previous years if you cannot fulfil a specific slot that you, as a team, have been allocated then it is your team’s responsibility to get that slot covered and not the league’s. If this situation does arise we advise arranging a replacement as soon as possible, and once agreed to send confirmation of the ‘substitute’ umpire via email to the committee, and the captains of the two playing teams.

You will also see the name of Carl Dunn appear against games scheduled for 2 of the Sundays in May. This is because he attended the recent EMSL umpiring course, even though he lives in the West Midlands. Unfortunately there isn’t a league running in Birmingham currently, so he has requested we allocate him some games so he can get some umpiring experience, the same as our own umpires would do straight after qualifying (some of you will have had him umpire yesterday at Firstball). However, if any of the teams playing on those 2 dates would prefer to retain their umpiring slot (ie for the game between the other 2 teams attending on the day) please can you let me know ASAP and we will let Carl know.

For the eagle-eyed among you, you will also note that Loughborough haven’t been allocated any games to umpire. This is because they were due to send people on the EMSL umpiring course this year but it was scheduled on the same weekend as the University Softball Championships, so they couldn’t release their players to attend.

The committee has discussed this situation and given that it was basically our fault for planning the course on a weekend when we should have been aware that they couldn’t attend for softball reasons (which we have viewed as slightly different to an individual just not being available to attend on the weekend the course is booked for), then we have agreed to give dispensation for this year. This is another reason why Carl’s help will also prove to be invaluable in being able to cover some of the games Loughborough would have officiated in had they had their own umpire.

We have also listed some umpire slots in bold where a team wouldn’t normally be expecting to umpire. This is mainly Sundays when their team isn’t playing, but we need someone to cover for Loughborough again, and Carl isn’t available on those particular dates. There are also a few Tuesday games that need to be covered and I appreciate that this may be more difficult to do than on a Thursday.

At which point we’d just like to wish you and your teams good luck in the season ahead, and hopefully we’ll see you on the diamond at some point!